adminfrom parents, which rural teachers are not getting at all.
If urban teachers feel that by getting the proposed allowances the rural teachers would be better off, then they may as well request transfer to rural schools. We are sure the Ministry of Education, Arts, Sports and Culture will be too happy to process such applications with speed.
We acknowledge that urban teachers have extra costs they incur such as transport and accommodation, which rural teachers do not experience at the same level as urban teachers. But this is the reason why most parents have been generous with the incentives they have been giving teachers.
Other civil servants who face the same transport and accommodation pressures are not getting the incentives urban teachers are getting.
We don’t think giving teachers 30 percent of their salary as rural hardship allowance would be giving them a big advantage over their urban counterparts. In some of the schools urban teachers are getting more than that in the form of incentives.
The advantage of the proposal is that government will begin to assume greater responsibility for a section of its workforce. As time goes on, the incentives for urban teachers will be removed as the salaries improve.
Most professions recognise the need to give some sort of hardship allowance to those members of their society who opt to go and work under harsh conditions in rural areas. This is common in the medical profession where it is not easy to persuade a doctor to leave the city and work in some of the poorer districts of the country.
If the incentives for professionals to work in rural areas are higher we are likely to see more people opting to settle in rural areas.
Most mission schools are in rural settings and they have been able to attract some of the best teachers because of what they offer such as decent accommodation and excellent teaching environments. The pass rates in these schools bear testimony to the quality of teaching that takes place.
It would be unfair to continue to condemn students in rural areas to being taught by unqualified teachers because there are no incentives for qualified teachers to endure the hardships of rural life.
We have seen the government moving to equip the students in rural areas by ensuring that they have access to textbooks. Last year, the Ministry of Education successfully distributed textbooks to all secondary schools, having done so for primary schools the previous year.
They have reduced the student to book ratio from as high as 10 to 1 to the desired 1 to 1 in some schools. If they then support this programme by motivating teachers to do their best, then we could begin to see the pass rates in rural schools improving.
Generally rural schools are performing poorly in national exams and they need to get special attention. We have previously reported cases of schools that recorded zero percent pass rates, which suggests that there is need to give special attention to rural schools.
Upon attainment of independence in 1980, the Government sought to give access to higher education to every child. It set up a number of schools known as Upper Tops, and deployed mostly temporary teachers. The Government also availed the necessary textbooks and furniture whilst the parents moulded bricks and built the classrooms.
The system worked well for a number of years and the pass rates were not bad. It is only when the infrastructure at the schools began to deteriorate and textbooks disappeared from schools that the results began to decline.
The decade of economic hardships sounded the death knell on most of the schools. They are now in desperate need of resuscitation, beginning with motivating the teachers and making available learning and teaching materials.
Admittedly, urban schools have also suffered and are in need of improvement. But the School Development Associations are mobilising a lot of money from parents, which if properly used can bring the necessary turnaround in the quality of education being offered at these schools.
Online Reporter